Friday, September 9, 2016

Γεια σας! It's been two years since my last email update, and I'm once more in transit. I graduated from the UMass MFA program in May, published in a few new pieces (New Delta Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Out Magazine), flirted with life in New York, and packed my bags to begin a year researching and writing a new book as a Fulbright Fellow in Greece.

Over the next year, I'll be sharing images, impressions, and observations so that you can get a sense of my life here and also keep tabs on how my project's shaping up. I'm reading Henry Miller's Colossus of Maroussi as my entrée to writing about Greece, and while I admire Miller's grand claims ("Greece could swallow both the United States and Europe."), I don't feel comfortable making them myself. I write to you instead from a subjectivity suspicious of "knowing," though perhaps subjectivity and authority aren't mutually exclusive since Miller gains authority by submerging readers in opinions delivered as fact.

1. Athens

August is a strange month to arrive in Athens. It's the hottest month of the year (temperatures in the mid-90s), and the city empties out. Most Athenians take vacation around August 15, the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, to visit family villages or seaside second houses. Businesses post signs with the dates they'll be away. The National Library is closed all month. People do everything outdoors: drink coffee on sidewalk cafes, watch movies on rooftops with views of the Acropolis, swim at crystal-blue beaches just south of Athens, shop for fresh fruit, honey, and fish at the λαϊκή αγορά, daily farmer's markets.

Athens is a city of many faces. It's sprawling and gritty, and like Los Angeles, it rebuffs tourists' attempts to digest it, hiding its best cafes and restaurants behind nondescript facades. I love this quality in a city because it rewards those who seek it out, not those who expect the city to embrace them. The modern city overlays the ancient one, and I hope to learn more about this relationship in the coming months.

In some ways, Athens feels like being back in the US in the early 2000s. People prefer to call rather than text. You buy phone minutes (5 euro for 200 min) and data (5 euro for 500 MB) in πακέτα and borrow friends' phones or take advantage of special deals to work around the constraints of your plan. Public in Syntagma Square still sells music CDs. You rent DVDs from video clubs to watch with friends. Food and basic supplies are cheap, but luxuries like iPhone chargers and Moleskine notebooks carry premium prices.

Abandoned hotel in Legrena.

I visited the new Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center for an evening concert in the park and a screening of Hitchcock's Saboteur. The center is still under construction, but when it is finished, the National Opera and the National Library will be housed there. It's an optimistic vision of a future Athens. I've been thinking about this place vis-á-vis Miller: "A revivified Greece can very conceivably alter the whole destiny of Europe." If we invested in Greece and could break through the brambles of bureaucracy, the results would be extraordinary.

Every day here has the potential for adventure. A few days after arriving in Athens, I found myself riding on the back of a motorbike, and my Greek friend jumped the curb and cut through a pedestrian plaza. "In this country, there are no rules," he said. I can feel this trip changing me in lovely and essential ways. I've always held myself apart from people, partly as a defensive measure, and I can feel myself starting to let go of that. I'm hoping to open myself to possibilities that, in the past, I would scarcely consider.

Love,

Steven

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About Me

Steven Tagle is a recent Stanford graduate with BAs in English and psychology. His writing interests include: touring erotic museums, making sock puppets, and teaching robots to love. He works diligently to increase his Googleability, picks the vegetables out of his fried rice, and uses the excuse "I need to revise my play," to escape exercise and drunken parties. He is currently working on a novel.